The part of CRISPR that keeps scientists up at night

our Twitter (X) feedView our Youtube channelView our Instagram feedView our Substack feedView our Spotify feed Jennifer Doudna co-invented CRISPR. Now she's the one asking how much power we should be allowed to handle. Science and TechBiotechnologySocial ResponsibilityGene EditingBioethics Jennifer A.

Doudna, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, has devoted her scientific career to revealing the secret life of RNA.[…] Jennifer A. Psychologist Sarah Schnitker says the answer lies in your purpose. How CRISPR’s Gene Drive Could Revive Extinct Species—or Create New Ones These life-saving treatments were considered ‘too small’ to fund.

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Here’s why that should fill us with wonder. How and why your memories shift over time, explained by neuroscience This one essential trait begins shaping us seconds after birth The ocean is evolving, and it’s not based on the ‘survival of the fittest’ Jennifer Doudna, biochemist and CRISPR co-inventor, walks through the technology's biggest ethical flashpoints: the 2018 announcement of the first gene-edited babies, the use of gene drives to spread edited traits through wild populations like mosquitoes, and the growing (if overhyped) push to revive extinct species like the dire wolf. Doudna explains why she still feels a personal sense of responsibility for how CRISPR gets used, why the biotech field had a head start on safety compared to AI, and why the real question isn't whether the technology works — it's whether we're moving at the right pace.

JENNIFER DOUDNA: I think it's very interesting what happened in the field of CRISPR regarding ethics, because the announcement of CRISPR babies — these were babies that had actually had their genomes edited as embryos using CRISPR. You know, that announcement was made in 2018, and it was a really shocking thing at the time. I think many people were caught off guard, you know, with this announcement.

And I think it illustrated for everyone in a visceral way why we needed to step up and get organized globally in terms of regulation around genome editing. When I think about the applications of CRISPR that give me pause, and I certainly put germline editing of the human genome in that bucket, I hope that in the future that it's used responsibly. And I can't guarantee it.